


Engaged

by Fericita



Series: When All Is Lost [20]
Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28171857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fericita/pseuds/Fericita
Summary: Found this while cleaning out google docs! Don't remember why I didn't post it. The Spaztic Fantastic fixed all the fencing mistakes and as always is a delight to create with.
Relationships: Agnarr/Iduna (Disney)
Series: When All Is Lost [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571230
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	Engaged

“Welcome, Thea! And congratulations on your engagement!” Iduna motioned for the young woman to sit down at the table, set by the castle staff with afternoon tea. Gerda was still there arranging cakes onto a platter with silver serving ware that was probably more valuable than anything at Fiske’s Boarding House; possibly all things at Fiske’s Boarding House put together. Iduna thanked her and Gerda left the two of them alone.

Thea sat, maintaining her rigid posture but smiling freely. She had yet to abandon her finishing school manners when visiting the castle and Iduna could understand that easily enough. Though she had been in the castle often during the academy, she was new to calling it home. It was an odd role, to be both houseguest and hostess. She was never quite sure if she was performing it correctly.

“Thank you. And to you as well!”

Iduna poured tea in both of their cups and then settled into her seat. There were four chairs at the table. Elias and Agnarr would join them after their fencing match. Until then, she hoped to make Thea feel welcomed. Elias had recently proposed and, after being so preoccupied in her own courtship with Agnarr, it was time to befriend this young woman whom with her friend had fallen so deeply in love. 

“Did you know he would ask? Or was it a surprise?”

Thea fiddled with her ring, looking at it and smiling. “It was a surprise to me. We went sailing and were alone and,” she trailed off, blushing, and reached for a piece of cake with the serving fork and transferred it with not a crumb lost. “I kissed him before answering, but he seemed to know. It was the first time he told me he loved me. And I him.” 

Iduna smiled as she served herself a slice of the cake, a few more crumbs lost but Thea was now delicately using the sugar tongs, her eyes focused on the cherished memory and hadn’t seemed to notice. “That’s romantic. Is that when you knew you loved him?”

“Oh, no, I knew that earlier. Perhaps when we danced at the king’s birthday ball. He was so chivalrous and graceful and charming.” She took a sip of her tea. “When did you know? That you loved the king?” 

Iduna took a bite of her cake and considered. “During the epidemic. When the castle guard summoned me and opened the gates to bring me to him. I thought he might be sick or already dead.” She ran her finger around the rim of her tea cup, quelling the sense of panic that rose at just the memory. “And then he emerged from a council meeting, pale but free of pox, and I was so relieved - and hungry and tired, it had been several days of much work and little rest - that I fainted. And he caught me.”

Thea sighed and smiled. “That’s very romantic. He swept you off your feet!”

Iduna laughed, thinking how if Agnarr had swept her off her feet at that time, then she had swept him off his first. In the woods, with the North Wind. But not even Agnarr remembered that and Thea certainly couldn’t know. “He did. And then upon waking told me Lady Wollen would be arranging for him to meet the eligible ladies of Europe and beyond, and could I please help him with this endeavor, since I was conveniently a woman and would know what these ladies liked?”

Thea gasped. “No. Oh no. Iduna, that’s awful.”

Eilas and Agnarr walked in then, carrying their fencing foils and masks and then discarding them on a bench against the wall. They were both sweaty and looking triumphant. “What’s awful, Iddy? I didn’t think you could see how badly he parried today. Could you tell, even all the way here?”

Thea leaned into Elias as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek and then sat down heavily in the chair next to hers. “Iduna was telling me about when she knew she was in love with the king.”

Elias lightly punched Agnarr in the arm as Agnarr walked past him to sit next to Iduna. “That is awful indeed, loving a man who is so pitiful at fencing.”

Agnarr took Iduna’s hand and kissed it. “That was a valid parry and you know it. Should we engage a mediator next time?”

“No need, no need, I know what happened,” Elias said, reaching to Thea’s plate for the untouched piece of cake and popping it in his mouth. “So when did you, Iddy?”

Iduna saw the scolding look Thea gave Elias and the wink he gave her in return. “When the Rock Pox happened. And I thought he was sick.” 

Agnarr squeezed her hand. “That was an awful time.”

“And you, Your Majesty? When do you know?” Thea asked, her eyes darting to Elias. “If that’s not too impertinent I mean.”

Elias served Thea a piece of cake and patted her hand and Iduna noticed how his fingers found the ring he had given her, how he gently caressed it with his thumb and then covered her hand with his. 

Agnarr had let go of her hand to take some cake, but after serving himself he put his hand on her knee and squeezed. “I’m sure it must have seemed far too long before I realized it.”

Elias raised a tea cup. “Cheers to that!”

Agnarr ignored him and smiled at Iduna, squeezing her knee tighter. “The trouble was I tried to tell you before I understood it myself. Looking for you during academy breaks. Giving you a plot to garden on the castle grounds. Asking you to help me with the task of entertaining foreign women sent here to court.”

Elias snorted. “Some ideas were better than others.”

Agnarr nodded, moving his hand to loop around Iduna’s back. She leaned into it, his joy at telling the story like a warmth that she was wrapping around herself.

“That I’ll admit. But I knew for sure by the time we rode that velocipede into the water.”

Iduna laughed. “Then?”

Agnarr shrugged. “It was fun. And you were ready for the adventure, and then when we fell I had a moment of panic thinking you were hurt or embarrassed, but you just came out of the water so amused. I loved you.” He lifted her hand and kissed it, right on the ring he had given her. “I love you.”

Iduna thought about how her dress had clung to her, dragging her down in the shallow, brackish water at the dock. How Agnarr had looped his arm around her waist and pulled her up against the weight of her skirts until some nearby sailors were able to fully pull her up. How he had demanded a blanket be brought out for her before he was similarly helped. She smiled and laughed a little, turning to Elias.

“That leaves you. When did you know you loved Thea?”

“Conveniently, it was that day. I saw her disembarking while Henrik and I howled in laughter at Agnarr.” He winked at Thea again and she laughed. “I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.” 

“That’s not love, that’s attraction. You didn’t love me then.”

Elias shrugged. “Who’s to say? I love you now.” He leaned in for a kiss and Iduna saw the momentary struggle on Thea’s face - the blush and the hesitation as her eyes looked to Iduna and the king, perhaps worried they would be bothered by such a show of affection. Iduna thought the kindest thing she could do would be to kiss Agnarr. So she did. And when she stopped, when their kiss broke as their lips widened into smiles and their foreheads touched, she turned to see that Elias and Thea were similarly engaged.

Later, when Agnarr walked her to her room to say goodnight and the guard conspicuously cleared her throat and announced she would be going out to the balcony to make an inspection, Iduna kissed him again. Without an audience she was bolder, her hand behind his neck and mouth parting as she tasted the wine from dinner still present on his tongue. 

He pulled away, placing his hands on her hips and gripping her tightly, taking deep breaths. Like he was dizzy but she was steady, even though she felt tossed by the wind. And it stirred a memory. “I don’t think it was that day that I loved you,” she said. I think it was before.”

Her mind had been turning it over the rest of that afternoon, straight through dinner and their card game with Lady Wollen and Lord Hannasel. When had she first loved him? It probably wasn’t the first day they met, her hair unbound and her feet shod in boots made by her father. A short walk from the kota she had grown up in, her brothers close enough to chastise her for playing with an Arendellian boy and her mother scolding her for using the wind to play tricks. Or the next day, when the sight of him bleeding and helpless was more than she could bear and her mercy led to what amounted to exile. To being orphaned. 

And besides, that hadn’t been love. Not exactly. It had been affection, certainly, and curiosity too. Which, despite getting to know him more and more, had only grown imperceptibly, greater with each hour they spent together. Until his friendship was the most important one to her and she always wanted to be a little closer to the warmth of his body and the light of his smile.

The sickness was the first time she had lost her breath and steadiness and been consumed by fear. She had crumpled like a starched handkerchief that can stand for a moment on the table before it collapses, spread out like a lady’s petticoat on the floor. And so she had told that story to Thea. It was dramatic. She knew Thea would love it.

But the truth of it wasn’t as dramatic. Still miraculous, as love always is, but not delivered like a boulder tossed by Earth Giants. It was the steady churning of soil becoming ready for something beautiful to grow, the unfurling of a seed, the bloom of a flower. 

Agnarr seemed to also be thinking, not bothered by her silence. “I don’t think I can fix the time of it either. I only knew that you had become my best friend and favorite companion. And if I could spend the rest of my life with you, I would be the happiest of men.”

Iduna looped her other arm around his neck and pulled his head lower, speaking just inches from his lips. “And you’ve made me the happiest of women.” She thought briefly of the way his hair had flown in the wind as he was tossed about, and then as his lips joined hers with warmth and eagerness she didn’t think about anything else at all except his body on hers and how there was still so much more about him she wanted to learn. 


End file.
